


Fireworks with the Director of Admissions

by Aria_Lerendeair, StarlightDragon



Series: The Director of Admissions [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fluff, Fourth of July, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Sappy Castiel, Sappy Dean, everyone is a sap and it's gr9
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-22
Updated: 2016-07-22
Packaged: 2018-07-25 23:32:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7551424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aria_Lerendeair/pseuds/Aria_Lerendeair, https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarlightDragon/pseuds/StarlightDragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean and Cas are happily moved in together, and Dean's daughter Katie comes to stay for the summer. She's got her own ideas about what should happen next in Dean and Cas' relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fireworks with the Director of Admissions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aria_Lerendeair](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aria_Lerendeair/gifts).



> Hey look, I wrote more about these two nerds!! Magical Aria was nice enough to write me two whole sequels to my fic so I figured I'd add even more unnecessary candyfloss-style fluff. ♡ ♡

"Can you turn that thing off? Some of us are trying to sleep in!"

Dean kicked at the lawnmower's switch and glanced upwards, searching for the source of the screeching. Of course it was his neighbor Helen. She'd had a personal vendetta against him ever since he'd moved in, and had slightly burnt the cupcakes he'd made for his and Cas' housewarming party.

"Then close your window!" he yelled back. He knew it was early, but he still found it hard to have sympathy for someone who insisted on sleeping with their window wide open.

"It's June! It's far too hot to keep the window shut!" Helen retorted.

"Haven't you ever heard of air conditioning?" he shouted at the top of his lungs, realizing as he did so that the screaming was probably even worse than the sound of the lawnmower. Not to mention, he had far better things to do with his time than get into early morning arguments with his neighbors. After all, the only reason he was here in the first place, up so early and making sure the place looked perfect, was because Katie was coming home today. She'd just finished her first year of college - passing with flying colors, as anyone could have predicted - and it would be her first time staying at Dean and Castiel's place. 

So, who could blame Dean for being a little bit terrified?

He scowled, bending low over his lawnmower, striding along and attacking the grass. He had to make the place look perfect. It was the least he could do. This would already be so different to the city apartment Katie had spent her whole life in up til this point, and any tiny thing that would make the adjustment easy for her was worth it.

Dean reached the end of the garden and turned around, jumping in surprise when he saw a figure in his own doorway. He shut the lawnmower off once more so that he could focus on Cas, wrapped in a dark blue robe, his hair still a mess from sleeping with Dean's hand in it all night.

This time, Dean didn't mind the distraction nearly as much.

"Come back to bed," Cas called from the doorway, not stepping outside, presumably because of his bare feet. "I know you're trying to make everything perfect for Katie, but I'm sure that seeing you is the most important thing to her. She will hardly see that the grass is an inch too long and then turn around and leave."

"She might," Dean grumbled, but there was no real emotion behind the words. He headed over to the shed to put the lawnmower away.

Castiel extended his hand when he saw Dean walking towards him, and Dean took it, hoping his boyfriend wouldn't complain too much about the grass stains. Cas didn't mention them - just squeezed Dean's hand as he led him up the stairs.

"Everything will be fine," Cas promised in his soothing voice as he tucked Dean under the covers once more. Dean knew that it should probably be him saying that to Cas, that Cas probably had more of a reason to be nervous, considering he'd only met Katie a handful of times by this point and was now faced with the prospect of living with her for two full months. And yet Cas seemed to be taking the situation entirely in his stride while he, Dean, was kind of a nervous wreck right now.

He buried his face in Cas' chest, and let the steady rhythm of Cas' heartbeat lull him back to a few more much-needed hours of sleep.

\--

Dean went alone to collect Katie from the bus station, which was about a half hour's drive away, giving the two of them some time to catch up alone. Cas cooked dinner while Dean was out, making chicken alfredo because it was Katie's favorite and blueberry pie because it was Dean's favorite, and the three of them sat down to eat together once Dean and Katie had successfully made it home. Then, Dean announced that he had to go to the store to pick up milk, since none of them were exactly morning people, and it wouldn't be good if they all got into an argument on Katie's first full day because there was nothing to put on their cereal. Cas sat down on the couch, and as soon as she heard the front door click shut, Katie followed him in there and sat crosslegged, facing him directly.

"So, what are your intentions regarding my father?"

Castiel spluttered, choking on his water. "Excuse me?"

Katie folded her arms and fixed Cas with a stern look. "You listen to me. I was thirteen when he and my mom split up, and he knew it was the right thing to do, but it still hurt him. A lot. And if anything like that happens to him again, I'm not gonna be there to help him. So I need to know you're not planning on hurting him."

Cas offered her a small smile. He knew it would have been easy to laugh, especially with how dramatic she seemed to be being about this, but he understood where she was coming from. "I've already lost your dad once. I didn't want things to end between him and I back then, and I still don't now. Short of the apocalypse coming, I'd like to stay with him for the rest of my life."

Katie narrowed her eyes, considering him, trying to figure out whether she should trust him or not. Then, she relaxed, flopping back into the couch. "Right. Good. Next question. Do you need help picking out engagement rings?"

Cas choked again, this time just on the air. He wasn't sure what he'd expected when it came to Katie, but it wasn't this. All he'd known about her was from the stories Dean had told him, as well as her Cornell admissions essay, and that had all made her seem like... well, not like the kind of person who asked people she barely knew when they were planning to propose to their boyfriends.

Once he'd managed to calm himself down, Cas tried to deflect. "You know, I'm not sure Dean and I have plans to get married. After all, he's been married before, he and I are both older now, and we're living together. I really think that's enough to show that we're committed to each other."

Katie didn't even attempt to hide her eyeroll. "Right, because I'm thinking he'd like something simple, but personal. Nothing too flashy, but maybe some kind of inscription on the inside, some kind of message from you to him? He might try to pretend that it was too sappy for him, but secretly he'd love it."

Cas frowned, but after a moment, the frown became a chuckle. Katie really did take after Dean, it seemed.

"You remind me of someone else I know."

Katie looked a little confused, but she smiled. "Who?"

"You just don't take no for an answer. I don't know if he ever told you this, but your father sent me a letter, outlining all the reasons he thought I should let you into Cornell. This was before he knew it was me he was writing to. He just believed in you, and he refused to give up on your dreams."

"He didn't tell me, no," Katie replied in a slow voice. "He was always a bit shady about exactly what got the two of you talking again."

"Probably didn't want to embarrass you."

Katie laughed. "Trust me, he has absolutely no issue with doing that."

Cas laughed with her, because it really wasn't hard to imagine Dean as an affectionately embarrassing father, telling dad jokes and being just slightly overprotective when the two of them were out in public. He only wished he'd had a chance to see it for himself, and he let himself get lost in the thought of it for a few moments, before dragging himself back to the present day, and the issue at hand. "So, you really think I should propose?"

"Of course," Katie replied immediately. "He calls me up all the time to ask me how college is going, but he always just ends up talking about you with this dumb smile on his face that a man his age shouldn't ever be allowed to have, and I know he tries really hard to pretend he's not a hopeless romantic and he denies it whenever someone calls him out, but, he totally is. And he loves it when you do stuff for him, like, 

Cas leaned in, whispering conspiratorially. "Trust me, he's terrible at pretending. If he tells you he's cool and aloof in this relationship, it's a lie. You should hear some of the things he's said to me."

Katie laughed in delight. "Oh my God, can I tease him about that?"

"I'd expect nothing less. But returning to the point at hand... do you really think I should propose to him?"

"Have I seriously not made that clear enough yet?"

Castiel considered it. Back in the day, when the two of them had been together in high school, he used to imagine it. In his easy classes where he'd barely even had to show up in order to get an A, he'd sat there and gazed off into the distance and pictured Dean in a tux, a sprig of forget-me-nots tucked into his buttonhole, standing at the front of an aisle and shifting from foot to foot as he waited for Cas, the two of them nervous, with butterflies in their stomach just from the thought of each other, even after all these years. 

Of course, Dean looked a lot different now from when Cas had thought about it back then. Now, when he thought about who he might invite, it was a whole other guest list. They were both older, they had different tastes in food, in decorations, in music. It would barely be recognizable from the wedding of his daydreams.

But the other groom would be the same. And Cas couldn't deny that despite the changes, the thought of standing there next to Dean, telling the whole world how much he loved him - that sounded just as amazing as it had all those years ago.

"I've never proposed to anyone before. Will you help me plan it?"

Katie beamed, and she pulled a notebook out of nowhere, flipping it open to a page already filled with twenty different ideas for proposals.

\--

Over the next few weeks, Cas and Katie conspired whenever the two of them got a spare moment. Cas thought that Dean was probably getting suspicious of how much time the two of them were spending together, but when Dean confronted him about it, late at night while the two of them were cuddled up in bed together, Cas just offered him a wide-eyed innocent smile and said that it was very important to him to get to know Dean's family.

Dean's suspicious expression told Cas that he didn't quite believe him, but Cas knew plenty of ways to distract him.

So Cas and Katie continued plotting, getting ever more creative. At one point, they had to hide out in the shed together, having both announced they were going out to do entirely separate things. Cas got cobwebs in his hair, but by the end of that particular planning session, they'd officially set a date for the proposal, and were brainstorming strategies to get Dean in the right place at the right time. So, he decided it was worth it.

On the fourth of July, however, they took a day of from conspiring to go watch the local fireworks display.

"Just a local display, nothing like what the two of you have seen in the city, I'm sure," Cas apologized as the three of them trudged across a field to where a couple hundred people were gathered, sitting on picnic blankets, waiting for the celebrations to begin. "But the line at the hot dog truck is far shorter."

"See, this is why I'm dating you. You've always got your priorities in the right order," Dean laughed, leaning in to give Cas a soft peck on the lips.

Cas blushed and pretended to swat Dean away. "Dean, please. Not in front of the children."

"It's okay, I'm not looking," Katie promised. "You guys do your gross PDA thing, I'm gonna go grab that spot before someone else does."

She pointed to a grassy patch in front of a tree where nobody was sitting yet, and jogged over there. Cas took Dean's hand and the two of them made their way over at a more leisurely pace, watching the horizon turn a hundred different shades of red and orange as the sun dipped down behind the trees.

When they finally caught up with Katie, she'd already set out their own picnic blanket, and the three of them sat together quietly for a while, enjoying the calm of the evening. Cas tugged Dean into his lap, wrapping his arms protectively around his waist and dropping his chin onto Dean's shoulder, and if he'd moved his hands just a little higher, he might have noticed that Dean's heart was beating far faster than it normally did. But he didn't.

Then, without warning, Dean pulled himself from Cas' embrace and moved to sit crosslegged, facing him.

"Are you alright?" Cas frowned, unable to read the odd expression on Dean's face.

"Cas, do you remember? Summer before senior year of high school. My family always went to watch the fireworks on Fourth of July, and that year I took you with me. Course, the two of us snuck off into the parking lot while Sam and my dad were paying attention to the display, and we... well, you know what we did." Dean blushed and averted his eyes, toying with a stray thread from the picnic blanket. "But after the fireworks were over we lay on our picnic blanket and we talked about our future and I know it didn't work out like we planned it. But I'd really like for us to get it back on track. D'you know what I'm saying?"

Castiel frowned, tilting his head in one of his trademark looks of confusion. "Not entirely. I was under the impression that we were already more than back on track."

"Well, yeah." Dean waved a hand around awkwardly. "We are. And don't get me wrong, I love living with you, and I'm happy, every day, that I sent that letter and that we started talking again. And I don't even know if I should ask for more, cause I know I've already had way more second chances than I deserve.. But..."

Cas leaned over and placed a hand on his knee, smiling encouragingly, even though he was worried about what Dean might be going to say next. "But what?"

"But I thought that I'd really like to make things more official. I mean, Helen next door keeps making comments about the fact that we're living in sin, and... alright, fine, that's not the reason at all. I love you, Cas. And I have done since I was sixteen years old and terrified of my own feelings. And if I'd been a bit braver, a bit less scared of the future - it'd have been you I'd have ended up marrying. Hell, some days I wish it had been. Other days I'm fine with how things turned out, just so long as I ended up with you. But then I thought - well, it's not too late, is it?"

Dean dug around in his pocket, pulling out a tiny ring box. He snapped it open, offering it to Cas. The two matching gold bands inside were simple, but it was still obvious what they were.

"Cas. Fuck, Cas, I've already proposed to one person, you'd think I'd know what I'm doing by now, but I guess I still get tongue-tied around you. So I'm just gonna say it. I missed you every day we were apart, and I don't ever wanna be apart from you again. I want us to be together, in every way we can be. And I want to wear your ring and maybe even take your name and have the whole world know that we're together, so... Castiel Novak, will you marry me?"

For a long time, Cas didn't reply. He just stared at the two rings in the box Dean was holding, his mind thinking about nothing but the two very similar rings stashed away in a drawer in Katie's room, where Dean would never accidentally find them.

Dean was biting his lip, his eyes wide with fear. "Cas. Say something?"

Cas turned to look at Katie, who held up her hands, shielding herself. "I didn't know, I swear!"

Dean's face fell, and he closed the box, stuffing it back into his pants, curling in on himself with regret. Of course he'd managed to mess this up, again. Of course it had been too soon. Of course the whole idea of marrying Cas had been far too good to be true. "Didn't know what? What's going on?" 

Cas looked back at Dean and saw the hurt on his face. He'd clearly jumped to the wrong conclusion right away, and Cas grabbed his hand, knowing how much courage it must have taken Dean to ask him, desperate to reassure him right away. "Dean. The only reason I am not immediately leaping into your arms and saying yes is because I was planning to propose to you, too. Soon, in fact. Katie was helping me plan the perfect proposal. And then you spring this on me... stealing my thunder, as it were." 

Dean stared at him, his face frozen, and Cas could almost see the error message on the screen inside his head.

After a long silence, Dean finally managed to croak out a, "You were going to-"

"Ask you to marry me. Of course. Why do you think Katie and I have been talking so much? She was helping me plan."

Dean frowned. "But you asked me to move in with you. I figured it was my turn, I thought that if I wanted to marry you, which I do - dammit, Cas, I want to so much - I'd have to be the one to ask."

Castiel shook his head, squeezing Dean's hand as tight as he could without hurting him. "Dean. No. That's not how it works. I don't expect anything from you, I don't expect you to return every big gesture of mine with an even bigger one of your own. Everything I do for you is because I want to. And because I love you, possibly more than anyone has ever loved anyone."

Dean cleared his throat and averted his eyes, because he refused to cry, and he was now officially regretting doing this in public where anyone could see him. He rummaged around for the ring box once more, because even though he knew now that Cas had one back home as well, he suddenly couldn't wait another second to see their hands with matching rings.

He held out the open box and blinked again, struggling to form words around the lump in his throat. "I... I know that whatever you planned is probably way better than this, and you can still do your proposal if you want to... but, at least until then, will you wear this?"

"There is nothing that I would like better, Dean."

Dean removed one of the rings from the box and slid it onto Castiel's finger, before bringing Cas' hand to his mouth and giving the ring a soft kiss. He then allowed Cas to do the same to him, and the two of them held hands, their rings clinking together, eyes crinkled in twin smiles meant only for the other.

The moment was broken by Katie, clapping quietly beside them, doing her best not to draw too much attention to the couple. "Congratulations, guys. I'm a bit annoyed that all my hard work was for nothing, but you did pretty good here, Dad."

An announcement boomed out across the field, informing everybody there that the fireworks were due to start in ten minutes' time.

Castiel stood up and stretched, gesturing towards the food truck nearby. "I'm going to get myself some water. Do either of you want anything?"

Dean glanced between his daughter and his fiance, and his face spread into a slow smile. "Why would I? I have everything I could possibly want right here."

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me at **casandsip.tumblr.com** or talk to the much cooler Aria at **aria-lerendeair.tumblr.com** ♡ ♡


End file.
